Wilson Smith

Wilson Smith FRCP FRS (21 June 1897, Great Harwood at Blackburn; – 10 July 1965, Woolton Hill at Newbury) was a British physician, virologist and immunologist. He was part of the group that first isolated the influenza virus and developed one of the first vaccines against influenza. When Wilson Smith was ten years old, his father died and his mother took care of the four children alone. During his last year of secondary school at the Accrington Grammar School, he also taught at Great Harwood Elementary School. From 1915 to 1919 he served in France and Belgium as a private in the R.A.M.C.'s 107th Field Ambulance. From 1919 he studied medicine at the University of Manchester with degree qualification as both physician and surgeon (M.B., Ch.B.) in 1923. He was for two years a physician practising clinical medicine in Manchester and worked for one year as a ship's doctor aboard a Blue Funnel...